Why Is Teezo Touchdown Everywhere?
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When Teezo Touchdown popped up on two songs on Drake’s For All the Dogs — “Amen” and the wild falsetto outro of “7969 Santa” — they were just the latest in a series of high-profile, attention-grabbing guest spots for the Texas-born singer/rapper. That’s him crooning in a cartoonish British accent on “Modern Jam,” one of the best tracks on Travis Scott’s Utopia, and taking the first verse on Lil Yachty’s Tame Impala-like “The Ride” from Let’s Start Here.
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In the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now, Teezo talked about some of those features, the making of his excellent, if controversial, rap-rock debut album, How Do You Sleep at Night?, and more. Some highlights follow; for the full interview, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.
Janelle Monáe, who guests on Teezo’s single “You Thought,” was the first person to hear his finished album.
“One thing that really stuck to me,” says Teezo, “was she was like, ‘It’s not perfect, but I love that it’s not perfect.’ I feel like for a debut album, that’s what you want to hear. A lot of people want to put all their marbles on this whole Teezo Touchdown thing from album number one to decide whether I’ll be here or not, or whether this lasts. But I think this is just my album number one. This is me extending my hand, saying hello.”
The vocal style on Teezo’s next single, “Impossible,” was inspired in part by… Bruce Springsteen.
“I was on a Bruce Springsteen kick for a little minute,” Teezo says. “I just had discovered his first project, seeing how DIY and how bedroom pop he was going into that. With ‘Impossible,’ it was that the minimalism of, ‘I want to strip it down just to me as far as my vocal production. I don’t want to overly sing. I just want to just have this flow of consciousness.'”
Though Teezo’s album is a far more aggro brand of rock-rap fusion than Yachty’s psychedelic Let’s Get Started, the processes behind the two albums have a lot in common.
First of all, as Teezo points out, he and Yachty shared three producer/co-writers — Fousheé (who also co-wrote Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit”), as well as the Raisen brothers (Jeremiah “Sadpony” Raisen and Justin Raisen). “For the Yachty session. It was just musicianship through and through, just a studio full of talented musicians. So I think that’s probably the common denominator.”
Yachty had faith in Teezo from early on.
“Yachty was one of the first people to look me in the eyes and tell me how big I’m going to be,” Teezo says.
Working with Travis Scott was inspiring.
“He really loves this art thing,” says Teezo, who is also opening for Scott’s current tour. “I think that’s so inspirational when I run into people who are doing it at this high level and they have this childlike love for what they do. To be on a Travis Scott album, it’s one of the moments I have to pinch myself.” As for Teezo’s unforgettable vocal style on “Modern Jam”: “I think if you want to pinpoint the research processes, just look at all great frontmen in rock & roll. Look at a Lennon, look at a Freddie Mercury, look at a David Bowie, look at a Prince. You just go down the list of top frontmen. I think that’s how you get to a song like ‘Modern Jam.'”
He had no fear of playing his album for Drake, who ended up calling it “some of the best music ever.”
“I was excited and eager to initiate a conversation like that,” Teezo says. “I knew what I was sitting on.”
His heavily rock-influenced debut album hasn’t been an out-of-the-gate commercial smash, but Teezo says he’s in it for the long run.
“My team told me, like, ‘Yo, expect a long game here.’ So I’m just working the project person by person. I’m looking at, how many people do I get to talk to a day? ‘Cause I can control that.”
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